The text this morning comes from Psalm chapter 24. I invite you to turn there with me and find that on page 458 in your pew Bibles, if you like, as well. As you're turning there, I want to ask you a question. What would you do if the doors in the back of the sanctuary back there flung open wide and a man riding on a horse began to come in? You'd probably be a little startled, to say the least. What if I told you he was wearing a long white robe and riding on a white horse? And I told you that he was a king and not just a king, but the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, the king of glory. You would probably sit up a little straighter, nudge the person next to you and say, hey, you better better pay attention. You might even fix yourself a little bit. And you'd listen to every word he had to say, you would probably hang on every syllable. If you don't find yourself moved in worship, you might at that point find yourself moved in worship. And I tell you. He rides in here, he comes the king of glory, he comes this morning, he rides on his word. The first chapter of the Gospel of John tells us in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He comes into this place. Will you open up your minds and your hearts and your ears that the king of glory may come in here what he has to say to us? Psalm chapter 24, beginning in the first verse. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. The world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord. and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O Gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord is strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O Gates. and lift them up. Oh, ancient doors that the king of glory may come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the king of glory. Since the reading of God's word, let's pray and ask that the king of glory would indeed come and be with us. Father, we do thank you for your goodness and your grace and your mercy to us. For your word to us, as you send your spirit that we might understand you have sent your son that we might see you, the King of Glory. Would you open up our ears, give us ears to hear, hearts to receive, minds to understand, eyes to see your King of Glory. It's in his name that we pray. Amen. You no doubt remember Timothy McVeigh. He was the one who in 1995 was convicted and executed of the Oklahoma City bombings. As his last days drew to a close, all the remaining victims and the families of the victims and the media and all of us really wanted to know what his last words would be. He didn't give a verbal last statement. Instead, he wrote out a handwritten note to the warden. And in that note, he quoted from the 19th century poet William Ernest Henley, a poem entitled Invictus, which is Latin for unconquered. Hear these words of the point out of the night that covers me black as the pit from pole to pole. I think whatever God's may be for my unconquerable soul in the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winched nor cried aloud under the bludgeoning of chance. My head is bloody, but unbound beyond this place of wrath and tears looms, but the horror of the shade. And yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul. He goes on to say to write that if it turned out that there was an afterlife, he would improvise, adapt and overcome. How foolish we said, what a fool. How could he be so bold and brazen? Today's final statement, his fist shaking at his creator betrays the depth of depravity. It's hard for us to even understand how he might do that. We struggle to make sense of it, and we say it's it's the rantings of a madman. This man is crazy. We dehumanize him. We say he's just a small part of humanity, wasn't thinking clearly, he was. Misled. But the attitude expressed in that poem is an attitude rampant, not just in the serial killer. Not just in Timothy McVeigh. That is the attitude of our hearts as well. We rarely state this rebellion so blatantly, so outright and so boldly and defiantly. Yet it is seen in how we order our lives. It's seen in what we hold most closely and what we hold most dear. What produced such a monster in the bay is the seed which finds its home in you and I as well. Henley's poem epitomizes one preacher puts it the attitude not only of a big day but also of the stubborn and headstrong toddler rejecting his mother's request. The teenager casting aside her father's wisdom, the student choosing to disregard God's word, the husband walking out on his wife for the arms of another man, another woman or man. But this song this morning. Whose depravity reaches. But our song this morning is a song that does not proclaim man's goal. His autonomy and kingship, but the glory, the sovereignty, the majesty, the kingship of God alone. After all, it is a song that not about our our competence. It is about the Lord who rescues incompetent people. We must see this one who rescues the king of glory. This song celebrates God's kingship in relationship to his people. It shows us a God who creates, who enters into the presence of our God, who is holy. Who processes with this one who triumphs, the God who is victorious. First, we see the God who creates, look in verses one and two. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. All the world, David tells us, is his. He's making a universal claim about the king of glory, that every creature, the birds that fly in the air, the sand on the seashore, every part of his creation is his. He owns it. He has created it. And we struggle to grasp this, what this seemingly obvious and simple statement is saying to us, we try to understand how he can in one hand. Be the keeper of molecules. Of the space between molecules. Of the between the between. And yet how he can hold the universe in his hand as well. We struggle to get our minds around it. We struggle to understand how we can do all of that at once. How does he have the energy and the strength? How does he have the power and the desire? How does he have the stamina? I have a niece, she's just over two years old, and we play this game where I take her and I throw her in the air. She comes down and she says, do it again, do it again, do it again. So I throw her back up and she comes back down to do it again, again. And so I take a Tylenol and I throw her back up in the air. She comes back down and she says, do it again and again and again. And she realizes because you can see the wincing in my face and she knows I'm going to say, OK, no more, and she keeps saying it while she's in the air and while she comes down, while she's in the air, do it again and again and again. G.K. Chesterton has a quote about this sort of stamina. He says, and again, I try to stop, but once said that we should think of God like these children, not the parent who wants to stop, not the traits of a rebellious, needy child, but the child with unfettered energy. Listen to what he says about children with unfettered energy, because children have unbounding vitality because they are in spirit, fierce and free. Therefore, they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, do it again. And the grown up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up, people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, do it again to the sun and every evening, do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that God makes every daisy separately, but God has never tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy, for we have sinned and grown old and our father is younger than we. This is the God who rules the world, the creation, the universe, and he does it with such vigor and stamina. It blows our mind to not only understand that he is he has everything that's so small in his hand and the universe to that this is the God Of the universe. It's a song that is making that clear to us, I mean, just think about it for a moment, they're said to be nine to 10 million species of animals on the face of the earth, nine to 10 million. God not only created. But he knows. He knows them by name, he takes delight in them and sustains them by his continued care. It's without mentioning the stars in the sky, the planets, the universe. This is a grand and vast God. He is the one who holds the world, who sustains it. And if he is the one who sustains those nine to ten million species of animals, all those amoebas and the fleas, it stands to reason. That he takes special care of his special creatures that bear his image, that we as the jewel of God's creation, as he has looked upon us and said, you are created in my image and it is good. How much more if he takes care of the fleas and the amoebas? Will he take care of you and I? He protects us and he sustains us. Ancient kings used to inscribe their names on the back of bricks. This is how we actually found some of the kings in the Old Testament, as critics would say, those kings didn't really exist. Some archaeologists somewhere, as he's moving dirt around, would find a brick. He turned the brick over and there would be the inscription of a king, his name imprinted on the back of a brick. They put it down and they lift up another one and there's the king's name again. In fact, the king had placed inscribed his name upon every brick in his kingdom, his name. How much has the more has the king of glory inscribed his name upon us that we are his creatures, we bear his image. And we struggle to know this king of glory. Because he surpasses all our understanding of intellect, knowledge and vastness and moves into the realm of mystery, a place where we're not all that comfortable. After all, the Enlightenment tells us we must know, we must look, we must find, we must observe, we must see it through and through. We must know how it works and who it is. And we get uncomfortable because we can't wrap our minds around it, and we consequently, because we can't figure him out. Refuse to believe because we don't want to put our faith in one we can't comprehend fully. And we look at God and we say, I don't understand you. Your ways are not my ways that you're more vast than I could ever comprehend. But God simply says the answer to that, I am bigger than you can ever imagine. I created you. You are my creature. I sustain you. I am sovereign. And our lives bear this truth out, too, as we face circumstances that we cannot fathom, that we cannot see the reason for as we look at our lives, we can't understand how it all fits together, the pain and the suffering. Why? The Lord simply says, I am bigger than you. I am sovereign. I sustain you. I am the king of glory. I am the God almighty. If we are left thinking that there is no rhyme or reason that it is all simply random occurrences of unrelated events and we are left in despair, for if God is not in control, who is? What is our answer? But God says, I am in control. And to the believer, he promises more than that. That he works all things together for the good, for those who love God and are called according to his purposes, that he will never leave us nor forsake us. He does not promise that you will not feel chaotic, but that he is there establishing his kingdom against the perceived chaos itself. For after all, look in verse two, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. Now, we have to wrap our minds around this. To us, it just seems like he's making a an account of creation. He's saying the Lord created the heavens and the earth and upon the seas, he created dry ground. But in the Hebrews mind, it meant something different because the sea was seen as something evil and chaotic and dangerous. More than that, it was seen that the gods, little G, in the heavens were at war with the gods, little G, under the waters. And the dry ground was just simply a saucer that the people were stuck floating upon the water between these gods fighting. David is saying that upon all of that seeming chaos, evil and turmoil, God is establishing his kingdom upon the heads of the gods in the midst of those gods battlefield. God is saying, I establish my kingdom. Upon the chaos of the waters, my kingdom stands firm out of the chaos and fear, the Lord founded the earth and established. His kingdom is as wide as creation itself, and we are imprinted with his image. However, if a friend of mine puts it belonging to him by his right as creator does not necessarily put us in good stead with. Him, this isn't just a God who creates, but this is a God who is holy as well. Look in verses three and four, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. These verses speak of a very special place, this holy hill, the one, the place that has to be ascended Mount Zion, if it were, if you will. That this is where God dwells upon his holy hill. No, we belong to him by virtue of being created by him. It's not enough to simply belong to God by virtue of creation. For the creator, God is also a holy God. And in his holiness, he is therefore in contrast and against unholiness, he is so holy, pure and other that he can't look upon unholiness. He cannot look upon the sin itself. We are unholy and impure in our answer to the question of who may climb God's holy hill as we look at those verses, as it says, who may ascend to the holy hill? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift his soul, his heart up to idols, who does not swear deceitfully. And if you're anything like me, you slink down in your pew or behind the pulpit. And you think, I can't do it. I don't have clean hands. I don't have a pure heart. We can we can cry out with Isaiah and say, I'm a man of unclean lips. I come from a people of unclean lips. We look at those verses and and we're afraid. And we're undone because we recognize our stance before this now, not only creative God, not only the creator God, but the holy God. And we stand. Condemned. sinful, impure, unholy, and he is against us in anger and wrath because he is against sin. We, in our sin, are his enemies. Our lives are futile apart from him. After all, the psalm says we're only acceptable if we have clean hands and a pure heart. And if you're anything like me, you find yourself saying, I don't have a Clean hands and I don't have a pure heart. It scares us because it calls us to a moral ethic and a standard that I can't complete fully, and I suspect neither can you. Even if I can work outwardly to keep clean hands, Jesus tells me in the Sermon on the Mount that if I hate my brother in my heart, I've I've murdered him. Now my heart is impure. To lift my soul up to all sorts of idols, to things I think will bring me happiness and peace, to people who I think will fulfill me, to my own risky and dark desires. And I swear deceitfully by them, thinking that by invoking their comfort in their name, I will find peace and happiness and solace apart from God. Furthermore, I have spoken against my brothers and sisters for my own gain of reputation, pride, wealth, honor. whom I belittle and put down for my own name sake. Lord, help us. And he does. Look in verse five, after all. That we will receive blessing from the Lord and we will receive righteousness from the God of his salvation. There is no true worship in life apart from what Christ has done on our behalf as we sit here and recognize God's holiness and we're undone even by our own sin. We realize that there's no one created who can ascend the holy hill of the Lord. The Lord is quick to speak to us and say to them, I give righteousness. For those who realize that I'm undone, I can't I can't ascend the hill of the Lord, he says, my righteousness for your unrighteousness. Who may ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? The Lord Jesus Christ himself, the one and only who is holy. It would be like working in a factory factory where they work metal over and over and over again and the fires burn. Thousands of degrees and to even approach it from 30 or 40 feet away, you have to wear special gear, otherwise you will be consumed by the fire itself. The Lord has placed upon us his robe of righteousness that we now can ascend the holy hill of the Lord. The answer to the question, who may ascend? It's Christ and him alone. We see this king of glory not only through the God who creates, And not only through the God who is holy, who gives us his holiness, but also through the God who is victorious, the triumphant one. We've already mentioned that our God, who is holy, is at war against unholiness. He wages war against sin, death and the evil one, all the while turning back the clock, redeeming us, redeeming his world, keeping and restraining sin in the world and in your life and mine as well. He is about the business of bringing the Garden of Eden. Now he's redeeming us. He is saving us. He is fighting against sin, your sin and my sin, the sin of the world, the death that that brings and the evil one himself. There is a battle that is going on, we see it. And we being saved into fellowship with a God who is at war with sin and death and the devil means that we are brought to a place to be equipped like soldiers in his army. When we come into this place and we worship and we meet the king of glory, that is what we are doing. That is what is happening to us in the midst as we're working with the Lord, as he works in us by his Holy Spirit, as we fight against the sin in our world, in our lives and in the world. It's God who meets with us. who equips us, who trains us even in the midst of this place. Worship is a war cry. It is for us to see this king of glory, to see that we as his servants, if he is in the battle, we should expect battle as well. That we ought to be fighting as well against sin and death and even in God's strength, the evil one restraining sin in our lives and in the world. And as we fight, he is with us, too. He is not a king who is some distance away on his throne watching the war. He is a warrior king who condescends, who comes to be with us, to come alongside of us, to fight in and through us and to fight in and through his church as well. He is a warrior king who leads us and protects us with his almighty power against sin and the devil. That means we now can face the traumatic, the disappointing, our own sin, others sin, devastation, hurt, disappointment, evil, because the king of glory fights with us. He leads us up the hill to ascend to God's holy hill. And yet he comes down off his throne to be with us in the midst of our lives as we fight and work. He is there with us fighting alongside of us as well. the sea of our distress and chaos, he establishes his kingdom and our God, it says, is a victorious God. This whole dialogue we find in verses seven through 10 is perhaps used as a liturgical reenactment for the people of God of the time of when David brought back the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to Jerusalem. You remember what that Ark of the Covenant of the Lord represented, don't you? The very presence of God before the people of Israel and as David brought it back into Jerusalem, perhaps these words were also being said. David is the one who is said to have penned this song. And he's writing about bringing the ark back in to Jerusalem and the people living since David time before Christ would be reenacting these sorts of things in their worship, at least perhaps once a year. And as they reenact this historical scene, as they as they process up the hill from the Kidron Valley up the hill in Jerusalem, a priest or perhaps a choir declares the first two verses of our song. The world is the Lord's and everything therein. And they continue as they're going up the hill and a priest or a choir is calling out the question of verse three, who may ascend the hill of the Lord? And they're moving along in this reenactment. The answer comes a man with clean hands and a pure heart. And as they approach the temple, they call out to those inside the temple as they as they approach the top of the hill of the Lord. They cry out in verse seven, lift up your heads, O Gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in. Reply from within the temple, who is this king of glory? And the answer, again, from outside as they approach even closer, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Again, they call from outside the doors and gates as they approach, lift up your heads, O gates and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in. And as the gates are open, the ancient doors flown wide, the answer, the question once again, who is this king of glory? And as they're opening the doors and the gates lift up the answer, the Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory, the one triumphant, the one who leads his people up the hill into the presence of God. Who is this one who may ascend the hill of the Lord? It is Jesus Christ. Who is this king? of glory, it is none other than Christ himself. He enters heaven as a conquering king and he leads us there as well. Christ, strong and mighty in battle and the battles of the world and sin and death and the evil one and in our worlds as well. He's waging war against the chaos, the forces of sin and death. The God who owns all creation is the Lord who commands the host of heaven and earth. This warrior king who has defeated the forces of chaos and established the order of creation, the king of the army, is also our savior. Who is now seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, and who sustains the earth and all that dwell therein, and who is the warrior king who works in our midst and who will come back again to utterly destroy the evil one? Who is this king of glory? It is the son who returns to the father and is seated at his right side. It is the one who leads us into Father God's presence. It is the king of kings, the Lord of Lords, the king of glory, Christ Jesus himself. Let's pray. Father in heaven. King of glory. You are the strong and mighty one. You are the one mighty in battle, may we lift up our heads, our hearts, our eyes, our minds, our souls. That the king of glory may come in. Come in, we pray. In his name. Amen.